Cheap Home Sales Picked Up Some Steam in December

The sales distribution curve flattened out a bit between November and December, with low-priced homes inching up and many of the high-price buckets dropping a bit. In November the mode (i.e. the bucket with the most sales) for non-distressed sales was at $350,000 to $400,000, with 19 more sales in that range than any other. The non-distressed mode didn’t change in December, but the next two buckets down ($250,000 to $300,000 and $300,000 to $350,000) both came within 4 sales of the $350,000 to $400,000 range.

I expect we’ll see the curve sharpen back up and probably shift more toward the expensive ranges over the next few months.

To generate the chart below, I took all the sales data for single-family homes sold in King, Snohomish, and Pierce Counties from the beginning of 2010 through the end of December. Since my data download puts late-reported sales into the month that the sale actually took place rather than in the month they were reported, there is a slight difference in the number of sales I’m counting vs. what the NWMLS reports each month.

By default the chart shows just King County sales in December. Use the controls below to scroll through different months, or to see what the mix looks like for Snohomish or Pierce County. I’ve also added color-coding and controls to separate out “non-distressed” sales from the sales of bank-owned homes and short sales.